DISABILITY AND ORIENTATION. A PROJECT FOR VOLUNTEERS, A TASK WITH VOLUNTEERS

The project aims to analyze the offer of orientation pathways for people with disabilities, following an educational approach, promoted in the area of Padua (Italy). The course is defined as an action likely to know and to accompany people with disabilities and their families in the path of positive integration into the world of school and work. It is an "educational-training" course focuses on capacity building.
Particular attention is given to proposals of voluntary organizations, whose motivational and other aspects of the voluntary benefits are an effectiveness guarantee if operators receive an adequate training to get specific skills. In fact, the main objective is an optimal job insertion, satisfying person and company’s needs.
Volunteering includes:
• social bonds value;
• challenge, responding to emerging needs to satisfy the people at a disadvantage but also to the desire for recognition of the relationship;
• the ability to recognize the person who is another, albeit different from us that is in any case a person.
For this, it’s essential to promote awareness in the person's interests and skills expendable in labour market, encouraging all those paths that lead to self-autonomy and the implementation of a realistic life plan, taking into account the needs, potential and expectations of the subject and opportunities in the area. It becomes a "personal" orientation, undertaking all actions that address the need to assess and develop their potential and resources in a shared process in networking with the person, his family, services, schools, university(Caldin R. 2003, De Gasperi 2003, Porcarelli A. 2003, Montuschi 1997, Canevaro 1983).
The area covered by the research is the province of Padua, where the city of Padua, in accordance with local health, schools and social services for many years has been developing new strategies for the integration of disabled people. Interventions implemented, from the knowledge of individual cases, are aimed at formulating and implementing individualized intervention programs for inclusion and integration of each subject in different contexts.
The research methodology involves the following stages.
1. Bibliographical study on orientation for people with disabilities.
2. Collection of data on draft orientation for people with disabilities organized network in the territory.
3. Census of voluntary organizations involved in orientation activities for people with disabilities: interviews with managers and participant observation.
4. Qualitative analysis of collected data, including the use of software (atlas.t) and categorization of different types of orientation.
Data collection has provided a clear picture of what takes place in the territory and led to a project to create a "orientation service" for adolescents with disabilities that could be deployed by an organization Volunteer for the area of Padua disabilities and / or province, by networking with other departments, schools and universities. The project has three phases:
1 - reception, using multiple instruments at a time gathering information. In particular, through various interviews will be conducted a needs analysis and a forecast of future needs of the disabled person and his family;
2-action true: There are paths of independence, visits and workshops with schools and raising awareness of the context;
3-final stage and various proposals for discussion and decision making.